My Heart Belongs in Galveston, Texas

by Kathleen Y'Barbo

  “Spoken like a man who grew up with beaches.” She paused to enjoy the view from this distance and then crossed the road to step onto the sand. “Humor me, Jonah. We have nothing like this in New Orleans, and I intend to enjoy this while I can.”

  “By all means. Don’t let me interrupt.” Jonah laughed as he watched her tuck her notebook back into her pocket.

  Madeline glanced around to be certain no one was watching—besides Jonah, of course—and then she ran toward the surf.

  Jonah stood back and watched as Madeline discarded propriety and her shoes. Unlike his side of the island where the bay met the land in a marsh filled with sea grass, the Gulf of Mexico lapped against the sand here behind sand dunes covered with sea grapes.

  With the sun dipping lower toward the horizon, the tide had begun to come in, each wave daring to move a little closer up the sand. Terns and gulls screeched overhead while off in the distance a ship looked to be heading away from port.

  Owing to the crisp temperature on this spring afternoon, there were few others around on this stretch of the beach. Off in the distance he spied several vendors and a crowd of maybe a dozen families, but here there was only him and Madeline.

  Apparently, the foolish woman didn’t care about water temperature. Picking up her skirts just enough to keep them from dragging on the sand, Madeline stopped only when the waves were crashing around her ankles.

  Her laughter drifted past over the roar of the waves to catch his heart and hold it. How had he ever thought he could live without this woman?

  “Come on,” she called.

  “No thanks. I’ll just wait right here.” He crossed his arms over his chest, determined to enjoy this view, and this unexpectedly playful side of Madeline Latour.

  “Jonah, come look,” she said, now bent down as if enthralled by something she saw on the sand.

  “What is it?” he called from his safe and dry spot.

  She glanced up, her dark curls dancing in the sea breeze. “That’s what I need you to tell me, Mr. Beach Expert.”

  “Beach expert, is it?” Jonah grinned. “This expert is just fine standing over here. What you’re looking at is probably a seashell.”

  Again she looked up to fix her attention on him. “It isn’t,” she said. “It’s round. Some kind of circular thing.”

  “That would be a sand dollar. Is it white?”

  “Yes,” she called. “Come and see it. I’m afraid to touch it.”

  “Just pick it up. It isn’t alive,” he said, even as he knew the stubborn woman wouldn’t do it. “Oh all right. But don’t get my boots wet.”

  He picked his way across the sand and stood just close enough to see what all the fuss was about. “Yes, that’s a sand dollar. It’s harmless.”

  She reached down to touch the smooth white surface then looked back at him. “What’s underneath? Does it have teeth?”

  “Pick it up and see,” he said as a vendor strolled past to watch them openly. Jonah shooed the vendor away and then moved closer to Madeline. “I thought you didn’t rest until you got to the bottom of a story. Think of that sand dollar as a story and investigate.”

  She straightened and gave him a look. “You’re joking, right?”

  “Did it work?”

  Madeline looked down at the sand dollar and then back up at Jonah. “Maybe.”

  “All right. Yes, it has teeth—five of them—but they are inside the shell and cannot hurt you. Just keep an eye on the surf,” he warned. “The tide’s rising, and some of those waves can surprise you.”

  “I’m blaming you if this goes wrong,” she said with a broad grin as she knelt down to press her fingers into the sand.

  “Madeline, you should probably stand up now. That wave looks like it is—”

  A wave slammed into the back of her and then crashed past, sending Madeline tumbling forward. By the time the wave receded, Jonah was upon her.

  Madeline looked up at him through a curtain of wet hair, her fancy hat dangling by its ribbons from her neck and her day dress soaked through. Without a word, she thrust her hand up.

  “You’re right,” she said as she showed him the sand dollar clutched between her fingers. “It has no teeth on the back. Investigation complete.”

  Madeline sat as primly as possible considering her chair was a stretch of Texas beach and her skirts were now demurely stretched across her legs drying under the last rays of the Texas sun. Tracing the circular edge of the sand dollar in her lap, she paused to dust sand off her stiffening skirts.

  To her right the beach extended off into the distance with only a few families still strolling about. At the water’s edge a small boy tossed a toy boat into the waves and then dove in after it, emerging from the surf in a fit of giggles.

  To her left, Jonah sat beside her, his elbows resting on his knees and his boots soaked from the water she’d thrown on him. He hadn’t seemed to mind when she splashed him, but then she also hadn’t remained close enough to the water for him to get his revenge.

  “You’re not going to tell our boss about this, are you?” she asked as she glanced over at him.

  Jonah smiled a lazy smile and looked up into the sky, the sun slanting across his tanned features. “I figure we’re off duty right now,” he said. “Although I do like the idea of holding this over your head.”

  “Go ahead,” she said. “I’ll tell Madame you were willing to let me drown.”

  “Hardly.” He chuckled. “I warned you to watch for waves, but considering the trouble you put me through for just one sand dollar, I’m sure she wouldn’t blame me.” And then his face went serious. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I think you might be onto something.”

  Madeline slid him a sideways look. “Drowning?”

  “Yes, but not you.” He shook his head. “Let’s revisit the story of the second boat, the one that left Smith’s ship carrying Samuel’s daughter.”

  “All right.” Madeline shifted positions, chasing away a small bird that had wandered too close. “So the boat leaves the ship in the storm with a man rowing and a serving girl carrying the baby. Reverend Wyatt says the rest of the crew and their captain elected to stay with the ship.”

  “And risk drowning,” Jonah said. “But obviously the captain did not drown because he found his way home to his wife. Others likely did as well. But how?”

  He waved away any response she might make with a sweep of his hand. “Let’s leave that question for a minute and move to the baby. We have that ship placed in the waters near Indianola. It is approximately one hundred fifty miles from Indianola to Galveston, as we know from our trip.”

  “Right,” she said as she tucked the sand dollar into her pocket and then felt the soggy remains of her notes on the subject. “Oh, Jonah, look,” she said as she pulled the destroyed notebook out. “I’ve lost everything I wrote.”

  “No you haven’t,” he said as he leaned over to tap his forefinger lightly against her temple. “It’s all right here. Now back to this storm and the boat. Samuel’s version would have us believe the boat landed in Galveston and the serving girl was separated from the baby, never to see her again.”

  “But to do that, the man rowing that boat would have had to row for one hundred fifty miles,” she said as she dropped her notebook with a plop into the sand beside her.

  “In a storm,” Jonah added.

  “That just isn’t possible.” She paused. “So what do you think happened?”

  “I see several possible scenarios. That boat could have come ashore somewhere else along the coast—definitely not Indianola because if it had Samuel would have found it eventually—but maybe Matagorda or another coastal town north or south of there.”

  “That is possible,” she said. “But someone with a motherless child is going to stand out. The word would eventually reach Samuel, don’t you think, especially considering how hard he searched?”

  “I do,” he said, “and that’s why I don’t think this is a viable option to consider.”
>
  “I agree,” she said. “So what other options are there?” Her face fell as she realized one of the two. “You don’t think that baby was lost at sea, do you?”

  He ducked his head. “I think it’s a possibility we have to consider. If that was the case, and that girl was later rescued, what do you think she would say to her rescuers? Possibly that the baby was taken from her rather than that she allowed the baby to drown on her watch.”

  “Why lie?”

  Jonah straightened. “Panic? Fear that someone of her status might not be believed? Any number of reasons.” He paused. “But let’s step back from that a minute and think again about a related question. How did that serving girl and the man who rowed the boat get to Galveston?”

  “We’ve already established they didn’t row there,” she said. “Unless the weather turned nice very quickly.”

  “Even if it did, why go north for more than a hundred miles when you are directly off the Texas coast? Why not row due west and land in under an hour, especially if there’s a newborn child aboard that is likely needing to feed?”

  “Oh, true.” She let out a long breath. “I can only think of one way they got to Galveston and that would be if another vessel picked them up.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So someone out there, if they are still living, picked up our serving girl and the baby from the boat, and possibly our rower too. That vessel was heading for Galveston, so they continued on and deposited all three—at least we hope it is all three—at the harbor. And that is where the serving girl and baby separate.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And using that theory, we can go to manifests and see which vessels were in port on those specific days. That narrows down which ship might have delivered them.”

  “It does,” Madeline said, “but it still doesn’t tell us what happened to that little girl. Or, for that matter, who that serving girl and rower were.”

  Jonah swiveled to face her. “What if Samuel knew?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what if he was so heartbroken over the loss of his wife that he just couldn’t deal with the care of a baby?”

  “Oh, Jonah, that’s just not possible, is it?”

  He seemed to consider the question. “I can’t imagine it. If this was you and that was our child…” He shook his head and then straightened his spine. “Well anyway, I wouldn’t react that way, but maybe he did.”

  “Maybe,” she said slowly, “but that’s out of the realm of fact, so I think we need to set aside that possibility for now.”

  Jonah shifted positions to look out toward the ocean, while Madeline returned her attention to the little boy and his boat, allowing the conversation to fall into a comfortable silence.

  She thought of Jonah’s reaction when he considered losing her and of how he could barely manage to speak about not finding their lost child. He was a good man, this Pinkerton detective who sat beside her.

  A very good man.

  Where would they be now if she hadn’t been so stupid? If she hadn’t counted her career as a reporter as more important than her fiancé’s reputation as a Pinkerton detective?

  “Madeline, do you ever think about where we would be if we hadn’t broken our engagement?” Jonah said softly.

  Madeline looked up sharply. “I don’t suppose you would believe me if I told you I just was.”

  He rolled over on his side and leaned up on his elbow. “I might.”

  “Okay, well, I was.”

  “And what did you think about all that?” he asked.

  “Oh no,” Madeline said, flustered beyond trusting anything she might say, “this is your conversation. You answer first.”

  “It was my question, which means you should be the one to answer.” He reached over with his free hand to place his palm over hers. “I think it doesn’t matter where we would be.”

  Madeline looked down at his hand, his fingers strong and his skin as brown and tanned as his face. “Why not?” she managed.

  “Because I was an idiot and you deserve better than an idiot.”

  Madeline lifted her head to chuckle. “Oh, Jonah, you’ve got it all wrong. I was the idiot. You deserved better than me.”

  Rather than respond, Jonah rose and then reached for Madeline’s hand to help her to her feet. “Though you might disagree, I am slightly less of an idiot now, and I wonder if you might consider taking me back.”

  “Back?” was all she could manage as her heart rose to her throat.

  “Madeline,” Jonah said patiently, “all you got out of that was one word? Don’t you have anything else to say?”

  “Yes,” she whispered as Jonah’s image shimmered before her through unshed tears.

  “Yes you do, or yes?”

  She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “As in yes I do.”

  “All right,” he said as he swiped at the sand on her cheek. “Then say it.”

  “Oh, Jonah,” she said. “Yes, the answer is yes!”

  He gathered her into his arms and laughed. “Then why didn’t you say so?”

  “Shut up and kiss me,” Madeline said.

  Jonah leaned down and then lifted his head again. “That necklace you always wear,” he said. “Were you wearing it when you went into the water?”

  “Yes, why?” She reached up to touch her neck, and her heart sank. “Oh, Jonah, it’s gone.”

  “Relax,” he said. “I will look for it.”

  She traced his footsteps down to the shoreline and watched as he paced across the sand. Finally Madeline could not stand by and do nothing, so she joined him in the search.

  “It’s gone,” he finally said.

  “It can’t be gone. I promised my father I wouldn’t take it off.”

  Jonah shook his head. “But you weren’t wearing it at the ball.”

  “I know,” she said, “and I felt terrible about that. When I realized you had my bag in your jacket pocket, I almost went after you because I was so worried about it being lost. And now it is.”

  She dissolved into tears. No effort on Jonah’s part to console her could stop her crying. “I’ve let my father down. I promised. You don’t have any idea what that key meant, Jonah. In our family we take these keys very seriously.”

  “Madeline,” he said. “You’re right. I don’t. But right now the tide is coming in. Tomorrow morning it will be out. I’ll come back and search for it. I promise. Likely it will be right where the water took it, waiting for you once the sand is uncovered again.”

  “You would do that for me?” she said as she swiped at her eyes.

  “I would do anything for you, Madeline Latour.” He wiped her tears away with the back of his hand and once again gathered her into his arms, apparently not caring that he was up to his knees in seawater and his boots would be ruined. “Now where were we?”

  Madeline looked up at him, her brown eyes now clear of their sadness. “I believe I had just told you to shut up and kiss me.”

  “Detective Cahill, is that you?” a familiar voice called.

  “Townsend,” they said in unison as Madeline rested her head on Jonah’s shoulder.

  “At least this time the story will be true,” she said.

  “Not if I break his fingers and he can’t write.”

  “Jonah, be serious,” she told him as she watched the Daily News reporter make his way across the sand toward them. “And don’t tell me you are because even if you do want to break his fingers, and you probably do, you’re a good man and I know you won’t.”

  “We just agreed I am an idiot,” he said under his breath. “Do you think that’s an adequate excuse that would stand up in court?”

  “Stop it,” she said with a giggle as she looked up at him. “He’s going to hear you.”

  Jonah released Madeline from his embrace then entwined his fingers with hers. “To what do we owe the pleasure, Townsend?”

  The reporter was clearly out of breath, his tie askew flying over his shoulder in the breeze. When h
e stopped in front of them, he doubled over as if trying to catch his breath.

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I’ve just come from covering an accident. An old man nearly drowned when he slipped and fell into the water over by the harbor, but they’ve got him at the hospital.” The reporter glanced down at Madeline. “He’s especially anxious to speak with you, Miss Latour. Officer Pearson sent me to try and find you, and I looked everywhere until I finally spied the two of you here.”

  Madeline looked over at Jonah and then returned her attention to Mr. Townsend. “Whatever would he want to speak with me for?”

  Mr. Townsend gasped for air. “It’s his last wish to have the secrets of his past told to someone who knows what to do with them, so he says.”

  “Who is this man?” she said as she followed Townsend toward Beach Road where a buggy was waiting. Jonah fell into step beside her.

  “Name is Horace Montlake,” he said.

  The confines of the loud and busy ward at the city hospital did not allow for conversation or privacy, although drapes had been drawn around the commander’s bed to offer a modicum of privacy.

  “Where is his family?” Madeline whispered as she straightened the blanket covering the elderly gentleman.

  Jonah came to stand behind her, his arms surrounding her. “He outlived them all,” he said. “Never married and his brothers were older than him.”

  “Then he needs us,” she said.

  Jonah stepped back to still her hand. “It’s likely he will not recover sufficiently to know you’re here.”

  “But I will know if I wasn’t.”

  “I should argue against you staying here any longer. You’re just going to watch this man die,” Jonah said. “But given your stubbornness, I’m going to bring a folding chair and something for you to eat.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Jonah was back much sooner than she expected, and true to his word he brought her a place to sit and food to eat. Though she had no appetite, she did gratefully open the folding chair and place it next to the cot where the commander still lay motionless.

  “The doctor came to visit while you were away,” she said. “It won’t be much longer now, so if you want to go, I will be fine.”